Testing a New Fruit: Cherimoya

It's official: with the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shevat (or the New Year of the Trees) - when it is customary to try a new, eventually exotic fruit - in less than a month, I am looking for interesting fruits to add to an amazing fruit salad I can't wait to share on the blog. Actually, I am open for even two salads, if my testing is going well. 

For a long time, I wanted to test and taste cherimoya, which is the star of this blog post, one from a longer series dedicated to exotic - at least for the Europeans - fruits.

Heart-shaped and as big as a middle-sized grapefruit, cherimoya is originally from Southern Ecuador and Northern Peru. Mark Twain, both a gourmet and a traveller around the world, called it 'deliciousness itself'. The skin and the seeds are not edible. Cutting it is not that easy, as the sking is pretty hard and may present resistance to a less sharper knife. Rich in Vitamin C and B, it has a lemon smell and a milky white pulp.  

My personal experience with this fruit was not outstanding. All the reviews and food stories I've read kept telling that it tastes as a combination between pineapple, raspberries and strawberries. No trace of it in my fruit. It tasted rather as a (very) green apple. For me, it looks like a great fit in a fruit salad with many very sweet fruits - such as bananas or mangoes, but individually, it did not present for me a special flavour that I would rather leave as the main element in a salad or cocktail in order to build around it with complimentary flavors. It might be that I've been unlucky and found a bad fruit and I would love to keep trying different fruits - eventually, from another country of origin - but until now, I may not consider cherimoya for any further involvement in my foodie plans. 

Ready for Tu B'Shvat - and some funny decorations ideas

I love Tu B'Shvat because it announces the spring, my favourite season of the year. Although born on Purim and very happy to celebrate it each time, Tu B'Shvat, which starts tonight, is more a bit more far away of the Pesach cleaning.  

Usually, I don't cook too much on this day, either because we are always invited to some nice seder, or simply because I always prefer to enjoy more veggie and fruity meals. 

This time, I prepared a salad with few of the main ingredients requested for this holiday:

It has a very simple recipe: baby salad leaves, roasted almonds, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, tomatoes and cashew nuts. The preparation of the roasted almonds takes around 10 minutes, and the overall preparation maximum 15. I will continue with some special meals for tomorrow's lunch and will be back with more fancy recipes. 

Each year, we keep the tradition of buying new - and sometimes exotic fruits. As we already tried maybe too many special ones, we reached almost the limit of the choices in the old Europe. We spent the last Tu B'Shvat in London and went to Harrods for finding the unique fruits. This year we made some serious investigations at the Berlin equivalent - the glorious KDW - and ended up with some Latin American good looking fruits: mellow fruit (the yellow one) and tomate de arbol (a kind of tomato that grows in the tree). Will write more after we will taste it tonight. 

Our fruit basket looks like this:

We have there raisins, pears, dates, figs, apricots, kiwi, dried grapes.

As on the occasion of every holiday, I enjoy very much the family moments, not only when we cook and think together about the menu, but also the special gatherings when we try to make some decorations together. I did my best to calm the enthusiasm for too many of them, warning that we need more energy and ideas to be kept for Purim. 

However, we succeeded to have some colourful painted balloons, hanging some garlands over the living room table that usually is my little home office. Also, we decided to change completely a very modest basket, with some blue and red flowers adorned on all sides.

We bought the small pieces and the basket for less than 8 EUR, after a tour of the most convenient stores we found in Berlin: Strauss, Rossmann, McGeiz and Nanu Nana. It is the season of sales and thus we got some pretty good deals. 

The green wire used for attaching the flowers is both strong and looks good with the beige of the basket. With it, we hanged the flowers randomly around the edges. It was fun without taking too much precious time while giving me a relaxing time after relatively hectic last days.

The last but not least piece of decoration for this Tu B'Shvat is a colourful painting made by lovely S.: a free inspiration and cute combination of colours. 

Hag Sameach everyone!